Japanese text is traditionally written vertically, from top to bottom, and the columns are read from right to left. Due to the unique structure of the language, minimal punctuation is required. Exceptions to all this are academicpublications, technical writings, and some books, which are written from left to right as in Western countries.

Though 2000 kanji seems an intimidating number for the student of Japanese to learn, the first 1000 characters are sufficient to read almost 80% of written Japanese you're likely to encounter on a day-to-day basis. Knowing all 1800-some kanji on the official list will bring you up to 90% or so in terms of being able to read frequently-encountered characters. Although all kanji pretty much look similar and unintelligible to the uninitiated, the presence of radicals and repeated graphemes make learning them proceed fairly quickly after the first 500 or so.

Many characters that are used predominantly in names are not on the official list, and many of these are not generally used in ordinary writing; these characters must be learned as you meet people and read.